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Amazon Stymies Lendle E-book Lending Service
CheerfulMacFanboy writes "CNET quotes Lendle co-founder Jeff Croft: 'They [Amazon] shut the API access off, and without it, our site is mostly useless. So, we went ahead and pulled it down. Could we build a lending site without their API? Yes. But it wouldn't be the quality of product we expect from ourselves.' Croft also said 'at least two other Kindle lending services got the same message' yesterday.'"
Without the functionality being sanctioned by Amazon's own API, we aren't sure if there is a legal sinkhole waiting to ruin us.
10$ says Amazon has their own 'lending' service come online involving modest per-loan fees within 6 months.
Let's make a web site that completely and entirely depends on some interface provided by large perpetually hungry company!
And compete with that company!
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I've used the eBook Fling site, and they don't seem to use an API. Their site is built around their users following a number of steps to lend eBooks to each other, each step described in an iFrame below which the Amazon site is displayed.
They're probably still good to go, although the site has a number of deficiencies. For example, Amazon only allows US-based Kindle owners to lend books. They're not clear about this (you can't find it on the site) and eBook Fling doesn't tell you either. So I've wasted an hour or so finding out what was wrong with either eBook Fling or my Amazon account, until an Amazon rep finally figured out that I wasn't US-based.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
While I understand that the Kindle is sold somewhat as a loss-leader and a mechanism to try to sell ebooks for absurd prices (it's bad enough that paperbacks are $9; to charge that same price that costs you NOTHING to duplicate, NOTHING to store, NOTHING to ship, NOTHING to advertise is...hard to swallow), at some point even your lawyer-swaddled management must recognize that if one too blatantly attacks all *reasonable* means of use of that hardware, the only things left are going to be people who are willing and able to use your hardware WITHOUT your consent/cooperation, ie pirates.
Cutting off Lendle (and with a classy c&d sent from a 'do not reply' email address and no recourse to appeal or discuss), secretly editing books, purging books that people have purchased - all of these things simply indicate that you as a vendor are untrustworthy. Therefore the trusting will go elsewhere, the unscrupulous will continue to use Kindles and here's the kick: you're not going to see a DIME of their activities.
-Styopa
CJ Cherryh sells her books cheap and DRM free, see http://www.cherryh.com/, at least those for which she can wrest the rights back from publishers. Such direct book sales from authors, cuttong out publishers AND bookstores (brick like Borders or vaporous like Amazon) will get progressively easier. Just like the music industry will eventually learn, gouging your customers always loses in the long run.
Nah. Somewhere in between is better.
We do need some system of rewarding people who work hard, or else, evidence shows, people will just slack, and you end up not with everyone equally rich, but instead with everyone equally poor, so to say.
On the flipside, we do also need mechanisms for ensuring that capitalism is a servant of the people - and not it's master.
I tend to think the scandinavian countries hit the balance close to optimal, but offcourse I'm biased, being Norwegian myself. Some people would say we're -too- socialist, while others would say we're not -enough- socialist, to a certain degree it's a matter of personal taste, I guess.
But I think it's fairly clear-cut that capitalism in the USA, needs *more* moderating influence, and that it has gone too far in the direction of giving power to the wealthy.
Being from another Scandinavian country myself, I have to disagree. The nanny state is huge, and people are no longer able to be responsible for themselves. Everyone thinks about their rights, not their obligations to society. Also, there's a great deal of Jantelov thinking, which is basically an institutional form of jealousy. The scandies need to consider that they're no longer in an isolated, homogeneous part of the world, where everyone agrees about what the public pot should be spent on.
But anyway, that's not the main point I wanted to make. It's not that giving power to the wealthy is the main problem. (Sure, it can be a problem, no doubt.) The problem is giving power to large institutions. Microsoft, AT&T, Shell, etc... government is yet another example. If you ever work with or for one of these behemoths, it's understandable why you're frustrated. Large organisations lack common sense in their decision making, and they lack common empathy in their dealings with ordinary individuals. Due to their size (and influence) they're also able to live beyond their useful age, holding up resources (people, mainly) from more productive uses. Unfortunately, the west has institutionalized a system where the big firms work with the big governments to make sure neither of them is ever renewed. If organisations were smaller, we'd have a much more healthy society, where useful firms live, and old, unproductive ones die.
You've previously stated that you make close to $150k, why not just say that instead of skirting around the question?
Oh, I know, it's because you know no one will take your claim of being "poor" seriously. Well, fortunately for us, this isn't 4chan and your posts never get erased.
Have a nice day. :)